From Boarding School to Specialized Military Education:
The Royal War Academy Between 1792 and 1866

Esbjorn Larsson
History
Uppsala University
esbjorn.larsson@hist.uu.se
June 2001

My dissertation concerns the development of the Royal War Academy,
a Swedish cadet academy founded in 1792, and its progress leading up to
its transformation into the Royal Military Academy in 1866. The starting
point for my study is the academy's original design as a boarding school
for young, mostly noble, boys, instead of as an institution of specialized
military education. The goal of my thesis is to determine what purposes
such an academy served and to explain how the later changes towards a
specialized education came about changes that, in my view, reflect changes
within society as a whole.

To understand the role of the Royal War Academy in the late 18th century,
we must first consider the kind of society in which it evolved. The period
known in Sweden as the "Gustavian era" (1772-1809) was still
a time of late feudalism. It was a period with a centralized state, but
one in which the development of a full-scale commercial agriculture and
capitalist economy was still to come. During this period, military officers
had a prominent position in society, and the three most important factors
for securing a military career were nobility, personal relationships to
high military officials, and money.

As Swedish society changed in the 19th century, as a result of a growing
capitalist economy and political emancipation, so did military education.
In 1835, the military began demanding that new officers attain a diploma
from either the Royal War Academy or from one of the designated examining
committees. In the 1850s and 1860s, the Royal War Academy went through
several major changes, and in 1867 it became known as the Royal Military
Academy and was the only school that graduated army officers.

To explain the function of the Royal War Academy and its development
from boarding school to military college, I will use theories put forward
by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. One of Bourdieu's main interests
was to show how an elite manages to sustain and reproduce its dominating
position. From this point of view, Bourdieu doesn't see education as a
primary way of educating people, but rather as a way to consecrate an
elite and justify differences within society, thereby maintaining the
structure of domination. From this theoretical viewpoint, I launch the
hypothesis that the foremost function of the Royal War Academy was initially
to reproduce the noble domination within the military and not to produce
better military officers. In the process of trying to prove this hypothesis,
I will implement Bourdieu's theoretical framework when confronting the
empirical material. In this context, it is particularly interesting that
much of the training in the early years of the Royal War Academy was not
directed towards military skills, but rather toward cultivating manners
and becoming a gentleman.

An important tool in Bourdieu's "toolbox" is the concept of
"symbolic capital," which he defines as "what people find
valuable and adjudge as valuable." For example, symbolic capital
could be a noble title, an academic degree, or a prestigious job; in other
words, things other than money that may open doors for you within a group
or in society. The term "cultural capital" is a kind of symbolic
capital that usually derives from a finer social background often enhanced
by education. It is important, in this context, to understand that cultural
capital is not just a meter of knowledge attained, but that the style
and elegance ascribed to a person is just as important. When cultural
capital is embedded in an academic degree, it is often referred to as
"academic capital." Apart from symbolic capital, Bourdieu also
uses the term "social capital," a concept that concerns relationships,
such as kinship and friendship. In this study of 18th and 19th century
cadets, the terms "cultural/academic capital" and "social
capital" will be used to determine the value of a diploma from the
Royal War Academy. I will specifically look at the cadets' future careers
as well as their coming representation within the military higher staff.

To investigate the academy's development during the 19th century, another
of Bourdieu's terms, "field," will also be used. Field is seen
as "a system of relations between agents or institutions that fight
over something that that they find valuable." The art scene, to take
an example from Bourdieu's own research, can be seen as a field inhabited
by artists, critics, art dealers, etc., all fighting over what good art
really is. The amount and type of capital then determines the positions
on the field. In the case of the "Art Field," the fight stands
between the positions of established art and the avant-garde, between
high culture and commercial culture. In my research, I will construct
a "Military Field" in order to determine the positions of the
agents that have interest in how the military academy develops as well
as those groups that used the academy to reproduce or build up their stock
of capital.

Also important is the relationship between the field and other parts
of society. As Bourdieu has pointed out, the special logic of a particular
field will redirect external influences, very much in the same way a prism
breaks light. With that in mind, changes in the broader society's mode
of production probably influenced the Military Field in different ways
than it influenced the rest of society. Important in this context is the
change of the military's role in society, from being almost synonymous
with the state in the Gustavian era, to being reduced to just one of several
branches of the state apparatus during the 19th century. With this goal
to connect the society's mode of production and the Military Field, the
dissertation can be seen as an attempt to combine Bourdieu's field theory
with the Marxist notion of the production and reproduction of real life
as the determining element in history.